In linear algebra and statistics, the pseudo-determinant[1] is the product of all non-zero eigenvalues of a square matrix. It coincides with the regular determinant when the matrix is non-singular.

Definition

The pseudo-determinant of a square n-by-n matrix A may be defined as:

where |A| denotes the usual determinant, I denotes the identity matrix and rank(A) denotes the rank of A.[2]

Definition of pseudo-determinant using Vahlen matrix

The Vahlen matrix of a conformal transformation, the Möbius transformation (i.e. for ), is defined as . By the pseudo-determinant of the Vahlen matrix for the conformal transformation, we mean

If , the transformation is sense-preserving (rotation) whereas if the , the transformation is sense-preserving (reflection).

Computation for positive semi-definite case

If is positive semi-definite, then the singular values and eigenvalues of coincide. In this case, if the singular value decomposition (SVD) is available, then may be computed as the product of the non-zero singular values. If all singular values are zero, then the pseudo-determinant is 1.

Supposing , so that k is the number of non-zero singular values, we may write where is some n-by-k matrix and the dagger is the conjugate transpose. The singular values of are the squares of the singular values of and thus we have , where is the usual determinant in k dimensions. Further, if is written as the block column , then it holds, for any heights of the blocks and , that .

Application in statistics

If a statistical procedure ordinarily compares distributions in terms of the determinants of variance-covariance matrices then, in the case of singular matrices, this comparison can be undertaken by using a combination of the ranks of the matrices and their pseudo-determinants, with the matrix of higher rank being counted as "largest" and the pseudo-determinants only being used if the ranks are equal.[3] Thus pseudo-determinants are sometime presented in the outputs of statistical programs in cases where covariance matrices are singular.[4]

See also

References

  1. Minka, T.P. (2001). "Inferring a Gaussian Distribution". PDF
  2. Florescu, Ionut (2014). Probability and Stochastic Processes. Wiley. p. 529.
  3. SAS documentation on "Robust Distance"
  4. Bohling, Geoffrey C. (1997) "GSLIB-style programs for discriminant analysis and regionalized classification", Computers & Geosciences, 23 (7), 739761 doi:10.1016/S0098-3004(97)00050-2
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